


A Mutual Friend

by theLiterator



Series: Sparks & Stripes (Earth-3490) [2]
Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 3490
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Earth-3490, Flashbacks, Friendship, Gen, Genderswap, Identity Issues, Memories, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-02
Updated: 2015-02-02
Packaged: 2018-03-10 05:45:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3278948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLiterator/pseuds/theLiterator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Bucky locked eyes with Steve as everything came rushing back, a river of blood and screaming and silence. Her hands went to her face and slip through her hair, turning to claws as she shrieked and tore at her head.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Bucky!” Steve cried and his hand brushed hers, and he dropped the cube, and she reached for him, reached for it.</i>
</p><p> <i>“You should have killed me,” she whispered, and the cube shattered under her touch, and she was alone.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	A Mutual Friend

**Author's Note:**

> So I don't know if you guys noticed, but teaberryblue is writing this series of fics set in Earth-3490.
> 
> Well, early on in our adventure, we decided Bucky Barnes was also a woman in 3490, and I set out to write this (possibly at the same time as she was writing the first fic; I'm slow, what can I say!) version of what happens after Steve uses the Cosmic Cube to give Bucky back her memories.

Bucky locked eyes with Steve as everything came rushing back, a river of blood and screaming and silence. Her hands went to her face and slip through her hair, turning to claws as she shrieked and tore at her head.

“Bucky!” Steve cried and his hand brushed hers, and he dropped the cube, and she reached for him, reached for it.

“You should have killed me,” she whispered, and the cube shattered under her touch, and she was alone.

She looked around. Concertina wire and broken concrete, and she had thought “Home” just before she’d thought everything else, and she staggered to her feet.

There were signs, steel faded from too much sun, and it took her a moment, two, before she realized that she wasn’t in Russia.

“This is--” she whispered to herself, but didn’t dare finish the thought, aloud _or_ in her head, until she hit the main road; Washington Avenue, because US Army bases were predictable, patterned, easy to infiltrate, and she took off at a jog towards housing.

She didn’t run out of breath, and she heard phantom calls behind her, around her, so she ran faster and faster and through a broken door and up graffiti-ed stairs until she was where she--

The door was still in place, here, and it proudly proclaimed “Unit 1604” and she opened the door to--

Ruin. Ruin and more memories, but at least these ones weren’t blood.

There was a wooden bedframe bolted to the floor in one corner, but no mattress. It didn’t matter.

She huddled between the headboard and the silent radiator and slept fitfully until dawn.

The sun didn’t wake her, not exactly, but it sent the memories crawling back into their dark foxholes enough that she could stand. She was thirsty, and that struck her as funny.

She laughed and she ran her hands through her hair. It was tangled, which bothered her. She remembered the last time that had bothered her, remembered Steve braiding it back for her while she cleaned her gun, remembered his hands, gentle against her scalp and neck, remembered the wooden comb he’d picked up somewhere in Elsaß.

_”I’m not your girl, Rogers,” she’d said. “Save it for a resistance lady, save it for the next brothel.”_

_”Aww, Buck, you know you’re my very best girl,” he’d replied._

It had been frivolous and decidedly outside regulations, and she’d had to stuff it in her pack whenever they came anywhere near someone who might care that the best sharpshooter the Allies had to offer was a girl.

She’d been wearing it--

She’d been--

After, she didn’t remember thinking about her hair at all. Others’ hair-- a red-haired girl who’d smiled just for her, who grew up all too quickly, flashes as a toddler, a schoolgirl, a teenager, a stunning adult who had seduced her and seduced her and seduced her until there were no more flashes.

Dead, probably, though at someone else’s hands because otherwise she’d remember.

Her hands alone weren’t enough to sort her hair, and she was still thirsty (the taps worked no better than the radiator,) so she forced herself to leave her old quarters. The stairs were broken and three were missing, but she was the world’s greatest assassin, so even when she noticed this, it didn’t slow her down.

The world kept fading in and out, memory and reality congealing until she couldn’t tell if the yard was weedy and brown or green and perfectly kept, if the streets were empty or full.

She ignored the people and the broken chunks of concrete and asphalt and made her way to the quartermaster’s.

The building was supposed to have been temporary, she remembered. There had been that fire, and they’d put up a shanty with plaster and pressed board and rusty nails; she’d helped them staple down the siding.

The floor still rang hollow under her boots, and the walls listed more than ever, but it was the same building. It had lasted longer than she had, really, she thought.

The back room had been cleared out, all the steel racks empty and waiting, but she spotted some boxes under a stepladder, in a corner without much light, and when she opened them up she found uniforms and boots and socks, and she thought maybe someone had stashed this deliberately, though not with her in mind.

The blouses were all the wrong shape and the colors were crisply, irritatingly _off_ , and she couldn’t decide if it was because they were too modern or if they were too American, and that brought with it a flood of memory too; murder, and the stench of rotting greenery, the heat of a foreign sun.

Birds.

Screaming.

Helicopters flying, falling, dying.

Too American then.

She pulled on fresh fatigues and cinched in the waist with the little ties, and new socks and a fresh pair of boots. She had to shimmy under a steel shelving unit to find a bag, and when she pulled it out it was older than the uniforms, someone’s old gear bag, with cording and a Bowie knife and a P38. It clanked flatly against her metal hand, and she prodded at the rusted edge of it. Blood welled, and she stared at the parted skin, fascinated.

She worried about lockjaw for a vast, empty moment, and then memories whirled in place and she watched the cut knit itself together partially, scabbing over in a fraction of the time it ought to have taken.

Whatever regenerative chemicals they’d pumped her full of to keep her alive with their cryogenics must still be in her blood then.

And now all over the P38, just like the rust.

She pulled two more uniforms out to toss in the gear bag, and shoved her old things on top. She could have used a laundry bag, or soap and running water, but this was all better than what she’d _had_.

 _”You should have killed me,”_ she thought desperately again, because she knew, oh she knew.

She could not kill herself.

The motor pool _had_ moved, and when she finally found it, it was bare of even scrap metal. It was a new sensation, to walk into a room and not be drowned by memory. She found she preferred it.

There were two choices, really. She could go back up into Unit 1604 and curl up against the wall again, or she could walk.

She shouldered her pack.

The gate was listing on its hinges, and the guard shack was fallen on its side.

A woman sat on a sleek, dark, _modern_ car’s hood, evidently waiting for her. Everything about her was _arranged,_ and Bucky noted her mechanically; average height, dark hair, light eyes. She tried to find the mission briefing, to decide if this woman was handler, target, or simply collateral damage, but she drew a blank.

And she remembered _everything_ , so--

Collateral damage, maybe.

“Ms. Barnes,” the woman said. Bucky was unarmed, or she might have killed her for that. The mission was compro-

There wasn’t a mission. She shook her head to clear it.

“Who are you?”

“Natasha Stark, at your service. We have a mutual friend.”

She thought, suddenly, of Lukin, of his business suit and his cars and his slick, suave smile; this woman was definitely of his ilk. She blinked her eyes shut on the images of him in his perfectly cut business suit and his expensive liquor and his patronizing little grin, and opened them again to see _her_ , equally clad in a business suit that was somehow only slightly mussed from driving, but her eyes were hollow and ringed with dark circles like she hadn’t slept or hadn’t eaten, and her lipstick-stained mouth was in a careful smile that hinted at genuine pleasure. It remained to be seen what caused that.

“You’re definitely not the bombshell I’d pictured,” Natasha continued, tapping her lips thoughtfully. “Good thing I booked us a spa weekend. That’s about all the time we have though; I told my husband I couldn’t be involved with this because of Lukin.”

Natasha smiled at Bucky, a flash of teeth and wry humor. “He never realizes just how much of a liar I am. Get in the car, Elizabeth. I promise I won’t kill you.”

“That leaves a lot of options open,” Bucky pointed out. “How do you know my name?”

“I hacked your files.” There was a pause, a moment where Natasha visibly fought with herself. “ _All_ of your files. Get in the car, _Bucky._ ”

Bucky got in the car.

“Nice shirt,” Natasha said as she put the car into gear. Her fingers tapped a staccato beat on the gearshift, and they drove in silence until they hit the highway.

“Where are we going?” Bucky asked quietly.

“Told you: spa date. Makeover, wardrobe change, credit card on one of my many dummy accounts, new ID, the works.”

“There’s a spa for that?” Bucky asked, smiling a little.

“I’m Natasha Motherfucking Stark,” was the reply. “If I say there’s a spa for that, then there’s a spa for that.”

Somehow, Bucky believed her.

They pulled up to a hotel that hummed with conversation, even as early as 1600 hours, and Natasha tossed her keys to a valet as a busboy unloaded the car behind them.

“Stark party for check-in,” Natasha said at the counter, and the girl running it gaped and stuttered but managed to print their keycards and hand them across.

“If there’s anything you need, please--”

“Oh, darling,” Natasha said warmly, leaning over the counter and smiling a dazzling smile, “You’ll be the _first_ to know.”

Bucky shifted her feet, but didn’t say anything until the elevator.

“I thought you were married!” she blurted out, and Natasha smiled wryly.

“There is that, yes. But she won’t remember _you_ , Buck. I figured you’d prefer that.”

Bucky tried to settle back into her skin, but she felt oddly electrified.

“Now, we have two hours until dinner, and I expect you to get clean in that time,” Natasha said, changing the subject abruptly. “Understood?”

“Ma’am,” Bucky replied curtly.

Natasha smiled. “Birds of a feather,” she said warmly, and her hand ghosted down Bucky’s metal arm, which sent the memories flooding up to drown her, and she gasped as everything blurred.

“ _Stop_ ,” she tried to say, but it slurred out in Russian, and she reeled from a casual backhand that had happened decades ago.

“Bucky? Buck? Elizabeth?” Natasha was saying, and Bucky shook her head, mouth open but not enough oxygen, and she was freezing as they filled her with their chemicals, and she screamed.

“Get it off!” she demanded. “Take it off, no, I don’t want it, please, please. _Stop_.”

“Shh, okay, well, that’s one thing I can do for you, just as long as you do one thing for me first and _breathe_.” 

Bucky sucked in a breath.

“And out again,” Natasha murmured, and she had gotten a screwdriver from _somewhere_ and it was pressing into her shoulder, Natasha’s fingers butterfly-light along the seam where flesh met metal.

The elevator door opened on a pair of businessmen, who gaped.

“Fuck off,” someone snarled, and it was probably her, because Natasha struck her as too classy for that; she’d have probably flirted them away, like Bucky was supposed to, and then, with the grating noise only metal-on-metal can make, the arm was gone.

She groped at her shoulder, and then she looked over at Natasha, who was prodding at the hookups.

“Interesting,” Natasha said after a moment. “This is a hackjob,” she added, glancing at Bucky. “I could do better in my sleep. I mean, of course I could, I’m me, but my 17-year-old interns could do better in their sleep.”

“Well, it is decades-old tech,” Bucky said, and her voice was disturbingly even.

“There is that. Now, come on. I think those suits probably finished shitting themselves long enough to toddle off, and this is our floor.”

Natasha carefully resettled her grip on the metal arm, and Bucky couldn’t look at her while she was holding it, so she kept her eyes on Natasha’s shoes, which were made of some sort of fine gold mesh with paste stones attached in an explosion of citrine. The heels were a deep blood red, and the soles she could see were a starker crimson. If any shoes were made for a killer-- Bucky tried to picture them on her own feet and failed. Her feet fit in combat boots, not department store heels.

Natasha opened the door to the suite, and Bucky finally looked up. The three windows drew her attention first, as points of egress, and then she fastened her focus on the bathroom. It had a whirlpool tub, which was something she’d experienced once, in Rio de Janeiro, when she’d had to seduce a target to take him out because the city had been so packed with people she couldn’t do it from afar.

“Two hours,” Natasha told her. “I’m going to work on this. Probably won’t get anything done without, oh, a fabrication lab and two supercomputers, but what the hell.”

Bucky soaked. Everything eased, her muscles going loose, her back starting to ache from the sheer luxury of it all. She was naked, and weaponless, and in a suite in a hotel with a person she was fairly certain she had hallucinated into existence (perhaps it had been the cosmic cube?) and she was the most comfortable she could remember ever being.

She used up the whole tiny bottle of shampoo on her hair, and the second little bottle said “conditioner” and she didn’t know what that was but the instructions said it was for her hair too, so she used the whole bottle of that up as well.

Working everything one handed was both more and less difficult than she had expected. She wasn’t even sure she could get the other arm wet (she had no memories of immersing it, and she remembered _everything_ ). so it was probably for the best that Natasha had listened to her so completely and taken the damned thing away.

There were scars across her torso that hadn’t been there when she died, and as she traced them with her fingertips, the searing memories of receiving them threatened to overwhelm. She had been pretty enough, once, but there were the scars from where she’d run towards the explosion that had killed her parents, where the diesel fuel tank had burst into flame and the hot metal had torn through skin, and she knew she had never been whole.

That was okay, though. She could live with that.

She could _remember_ , and the novelty of that was almost good, almost wholesome, except that she could remember making Steve a daisy chain in the Rhineland just as vividly as she could remember her bullets piercing the heads of a family of foreign diplomats, the youngest of whom was only four.

But the scars no longer terrified her, at least, even as they hurt anew.

She drifted, half-dozing, until Natasha tapped at the door. “Hey, Bucky? It’s been half an hour since I heard splashing. Are you still alive in there?”

Bucky took a moment to think about that.

“Yes,” she decided on. “Da.”

“Good,” Natasha said. “Alive is good. Take your time, but I had some clothes delivered; you need to try them on.”

Bucky forced limbs gone limp to bear her weight again, and she took a towel but didn’t bother trying to use it one-handed. She emerged, naked, into the suite. There was a strange man there, and he’d shrunk back at the sight of her, so she temporarily dismissed him. No threat.

“Clothes?” Bucky asked, focusing on Natasha.

“Sure; I used the measurements on file with the decrypted files we stole from you-know-who, but nothing’s the same as a proper fitting.”

“I have clothes.”

“Yeah, I saw that. They haven’t been laundered since the 70s at least; I sent them to be cleaned, those and the stuff you were wearing… last night.”

“Oh,” Bucky said. “Why?”

Natasha shrugged. “Like I said; favor to a mutual friend. Now try on some of this lingerie before Eric swallows his tongue here, please. He’s the best stylist in New Jersey, and I’d hate to have to change our spa reservation.”

Natasha helped her with the underthings, and as she adjusted the fit of the bra, she murmured, “I’ll get you a new arm, a better one.”

“Or a 17-year-old intern will?” Bucky teased, leaning into the soft touch of fingers against her skin. They were calloused and rough which seemed oddly incongruent with the image of a woman who hired a stylist and wore heels that could be used as deadly weapons. She leaned in and _wanted_ and let that show in her eyes, and Natasha took a deliberate step away. Bucky licked her lips and swallowed hard. Right. No, that was untoward. Women didn’t... 

“Okay,” Eric the best stylist in New Jersey said. “Sit down, we’ll start with your hair since it’s already wet.”

“My hair?” Bucky asked, touching it.

“Yes, it needs trimming. When was the last time you went in for a cut?”

1941.

“1941,” Bucky said.

Natasha snorted, and Bucky tilted her wickedest grin in her direction.

“Hah,” Eric said flatly. “So it’s been awhile?” He opened a trunk that appeared to be full of cosmetics, and withdrew a roll.

Once he unrolled it, Bucky saw the steel-gleam of scissors and countless other tools laid out like a surgeon’s kit.

She reached for support, but there was nothing but air. She slid left, hit her knees.

“No,” she whispered.

“You need a trim, if nothing else.”

“Clippers,” Bucky said. “You must have clippers.” Unless those had been made obsolete since the last time the boys had had their biweekly barber visit.

“But your _hair_ ,” Eric protested. “It’s so _long_.”

“Not… no scissors. Just clip it off.”

“No?” Eric said, then, with more surety, “No.”

“You’ll be more noticeable if you get it clipped,” Natasha said rationally.

Bucky sucked in a breath, then another.

“No,” she said.

“But--”

“No!” she screamed, and swept her arm around, knocking the roll to the floor so the steel instruments scattered across the carpet.

“Okay,” Natasha said. “It’s okay, no haircut, got it, honestly at this point I’ll be happy if you hold still for it to be combed out.”

Bucky was shaking, shaking, shivering with cold and the cryogenic chemicals.

Natasha found the towel somewhere; Bucky didn’t remember having dropped it; and draped it around Bucky’s shoulders, and then draped herself around Bucky's shoulders for good measure.

Gradually, Bucky regained her composure. She didn’t apologize for the lapse, and Natasha, when she drew away, didn’t comment on it.

“Is it alright if Eric brushes your hair?”

“Yes,” Bucky forced herself to say. It was not alright to be terrified of a damned barber. She could endure this.

“Good, because I have to revise some plans, move some schedules around.” Natasha bent to kiss Bucky’s temple. “CEO stuff, nothing big, but I swear if I ignore it the whole company will burn to the ground. Be good.”

She was lying. Bucky watched her go, watched her leave the door ajar. She wondered why Natasha thought she could protect Eric if Bucky lost it again.

She hoped Natasha _could_ protect Eric if Bucky lost it again.

The motion of the comb through her hair, despite the alien shape of the comb itself, was nearly as soothing as the bath had been. Probably something about getting clean and groomed, making her tame again, a person instead of a weapon, was keeping her settled. It didn’t really matter.

“Alright, I’ve got the worst of it out,” Eric said softly, tossing aside another ball of dead hair. They were reminders of memories she didn’t want to have, and they clung to the comb and to his fingers as Eric threw them away, and she almost couldn’t look at the matted mess, but she couldn’t bring herself to look away. “If I go very slowly, and use the smallest pair of scissors, do you think we could get it trimmed up? You look-- If you’re going to be Natasha Stark’s piece on the side, you need to look the part.”

Bucky snorted.

“Will it help if you think about the last person who cut it, instead?” Eric said, drawing a tiny steel-- no, _silver_ \-- pair of scissors forth. “What was his name?”

“Jim,” she mumbled. “He had a niece, so he knew his business,” this time the memory that overwhelmed her was sweet with nostalgia and spicy with the scent of gunsmoke.

When he’d finished, her hair was barely any shorter, but it hung loosely around her face, and it felt significantly lighter. She ran her hand through it, and it slid through the strands easily, which was a definite improvement.

Hair.

Images flashed through her mind, different styles worn by the milling women, varying levels of functionality, varying levels of ridiculous.

“Do women still do pin curls,” she mused. “I always wanted to learn how to do that.”

Eric froze.

“Remember the NDA, Eric darling,” Natasha called in a sing-song voice from the other room, before murmuring “Sorry, Nat,” and going back to her phone call.

“Well,” Eric said. “No. Sorry. I can show you though? It’s quite straightforward.”

“No, no, I can’t-- I won’t stand out.”

“My darling,” Eric said, “I can see that you were born to stand out. No matter though, we’ll leave the hair for now; I doubt you’ll be able to stand a dryer right now.”

Once Bucky made it clear that she did not care what clothes were selected for her, he made quick work of fitting her, and then dressing her for supper. He pinned the sleeve of her dinner jacket up for her, and the nylons were perhaps the greatest invention of the last 70 years. They _stayed_.

“They don’t, actually. You’ll likely need to have Tasha show you how to fix them discreetly by the second course.”

Bucky fixed him with a scathing glare. “I know how to fix stockings, sir,” she bit out.

“Right. Of course. It’s only, you look nineteen, and most teenagers don't wear... Stockings. Not anymore.”

Bucky stared at him. “I _am_ nineteen,” she said, and then a flash of missions, freezing and thawing and murdering and loving, and… “Or, maybe older?”

“Twenty-one according to your passport!” Natasha hollered from her room.

“Apparently,” Bucky said dryly, “I have a passport that says I am twenty-one.”

“Very definitive, I’m sure,” Eric replied in exactly the same tones.

***

Natasha had arranged the food be ready by the time they got down to the private room reserved for them, and Bucky eyed the food on her side of the table warily, wondering if this was it. Natasha had been kind enough to give her a bath and clean clothes, to allow her to feel like a person again for a few hours, if she wanted Bucky to eat poisoned caviar now, it was…

It was a better death than she deserved.

The maitre’d carefully pulled out each of their chairs, and Bucky drew a polite smile from some memory from before her parents had died to share with him.

Her plate had steak tips in gravy, and mashed potatoes, and steamed vegetables. It was all very home-grown American, she thought wryly, and nothing that would require a knife to eat. She wondered if that was to keep knives from her grasp, (she didn’t need them; she could think of fifteen ways to kill Natasha at this table without knives or a pistol.) or as a polite concession to the metal arm that remained up in their suite.

The food was fantastic. She devoured it, and Natasha somehow summoned a waiter, who brought her an enormous confection. It looked too-sweet and too-expensive, and Bucky hesitated with her hand hovering over the dessert spoon. 

“What--”

“When was the last time you had dessert, Elizabeth?”

Bucky had to think about it; when she’d been kept awake for more than a few days, she’d eaten the same rations as the girls and boys in the Black Widow and Wolf Spider programs, and sometimes, when she’d only been kept awake a day or so at a time, the nutrients required for the cryogenics were deemed adequate to her needs.

So, that long mission in Rio, then. “Rio,” she said curtly, and in trying to remember the dates, she remembered her target smiling happily at her over a Portuguese headline, and the way he’d prepared all their food by hand-- “So many want me dead, meine liebling,” he’d said. “And deservedly so. But I must fight for my life, for I am a living creature, and all living creatures must fight for their lives. Ein bisschen mehr apfelstreusel, schatzi?”

"Nein. Oder-- nur ein bisschen mehr,” she’d replied, rubbing her belly with a satisfied smile. “Es schmeckt mir gut.” 

She hadn’t lied.

“September of 1983,” Bucky told Natasha. She blanched, but recovered quickly. 

"Well, I guess it's well overdue, then. Do you want anything else?"

Bucky almost asked for apfelstreusel, _almost_ , but in the end she remained silent, staring at the center of her empty dessert plate.

"Well, this has been enchanting, I'm sure, but--"

The door burst open, and Bucky was on her feet in a second, the dessert fork gripped tightly in her fist. Natasha tried to step between her and the door, but Bucky snarled and struck out with her makeshift weapon, drawing forth blood and a suppressed cry of pain.

A woman stepped in, red hair and melancholy eyes, and Bucky froze.

"Natalia," she whispered.

Natalia looked surprised, though on her it showed only through the briefest ruffling of her expression, the slightest widening of her nostrils. A shrug.

"Yelisavet," Natalia replied. " _What... Who are you_?"

“What the hell is going on here?” Natasha demanded. “Or, wait, no, don’t tell me. All Russian spies know each other?”

"You've grown," Bucky said ignoring-- ignoring _everything_ , Natasha and Nata, the sense-memories of starched sheets and soft skin, of showing Nata how to shoot as a child and how to fuck as a teenager, how to act like an American, how to not.

Natalia smiled, strained and stretched and not at all familiar, not like the fall of blood-red hair and the grace of her hands. " _You haven't_."

Bucky shrugged. " _I have an American passport that says I have_."

Natalia turned to face a gaping Natasha, and said, in English, "You told me you had a project for me; at no point did you specify that this project was the Winter Soldier. We'll definitely be discussing this later."

"What? It was a surprise!"

"Relevant information, Stark."

Bucky watched, utterly confused, as Natasha, who'd been supremely confident up to this moment, in control of every situation, sulked. "I hate the relevant information conversation though."

"Maybe you should stop ignoring it, then," Natalia replied. “ _You can stand down, lastochka,_ ” she added in Russian, for Bucky’s sake.

“I… that’s what I used to call you,” Bucky blurted in English, though she did turn and set the fork neatly on the table.

“You _remember_?” Natalia asked.

“Yes,” Bucky said, simply, sincerely. “I remember _everything_.”

“Oh,” Natalia said. “That is… unexpected. I assume the Captain was involved.”

Bucky quirked a grin. “That is, in fact, correct.”

“So you remember being… you remember--”

“Everything,” Bucky repeated.

Natalia sank gracefully into the seat that had no plates before it, and Bucky following her lead, took her own seat again.

“What happened to your arm?” Natalia finally asked.

“I’ve got it, Red. It’s not really up to my standards, you know? And even if my initial plan won’t be possible, I’m not letting her go without a full…” Natasha shrugged. “Arsenal,” she finally decided on.”

“Is that wise?” Bucky asked. “You’re going to need stitches from my _fork_.”

“Ask Red here-- ask _anyone_ , Ms. Barnes. I’m not known for my wisdom.”

“What are you going to tell your husband, Tasha?” Natalia asked. 

“Nothing,” Natasha replied. “He doesn’t even know I’m here.”

“I’m sure,” Natalia murmured skeptically.

“He doesn’t; I told him I was going to Tokyo on business.”

“Tasha, I hate to tell you this, but the only time you tell people that is when you’re lying about where you’re actually going.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Natasha said sullenly. “He’s not going to be following me.”

“Until the pictures of you and Lishka show up on all the gossip blogs tonight; he’ll know her. You know he will. Will he forgive you for keeping her from him?”

“Yes,” Natasha said steadily. “Look, I know you know people, you understand motivations and… and everything; you’re the perfect spy, whatever. But he’s _my husband_. I know him better than I know myself, okay? And this-- I may have to pretend like I never got a guest bedroom made up for her, I may have to pretend like I don’t know he knew I was lying this whole time, but I had to _try_.”

Bucky tugged the half-eaten plate of food from Natasha’s meal over, and she started picking at the salad there. She was, impossibly, still hungry.

“Spend the weekend with us,” Natasha said. “Please, Red.”

“I’m not going to risk leaving you alone with her, that much is certain, Tasha,” Natalia replied.

Bucky looked up from the now empty plate. “That’s sound strategy, Natalia,” she said, and Natalia smiled.

“I go by Natasha now, Lishka,” she said. “Or Red when she’s in the room, or Nat when she’s not.”

“I haven’t decided,” Bucky replied.

“That’s okay, Buck,” Natasha said. “We just want you to be okay. Names don’t matter in the light of your overall well-being.”

“So the meal wasn’t poisoned?”

Natasha looked surprised and hurt, and Natalia smiled at her, an empathetic smile. “I thought so too, the first time she fed me. But no, Lishka, she wouldn’t hurt you; especially not considering _Steve_.

Bucky frowned. “Steve?”

Natasha stood abruptly and clapped her hands cheerfully. “Well, food’s done, it’s time for manicures and facials while we wait for everything to digest. Coming, Red?”

***

The next morning, Bucky woke to a knock at the door, and she drew the knife she’d stolen from the kitchenette last night while Natasha and Natalia had been sleeping.

There was a stranger at the door, but he had a parcel on a dollie, so Bucky held back, keeping him just within her line of sight, until he left.

Natasha picked up the parcel with a soft grunt, and then set it on the table, where she held out a hand. Bucky crept forward and handed her the knife guiltily, but Natasha simply used it to open the box, then reversed her grip in order to hand it back safely.

“Here,” she said. “This should be light years better. At the very least, it no longer weighs approximately a thousand pounds.”

“How much does it weigh?” 

“I got it down to about six kilograms.”

“Six?” Bucky echoed, incredulously. “I thought you said you’d need two supercomputers and a fabrication plant.”

“Honey, I run Stark International. Those things are always available to me.”

Bucky nodded. “Right,” she said softly, lying with her voice and her body language, because… because.

She didn’t remember _this_.

“Well, you want to try it on for size? We’ve got massages scheduled today, and I even got you a localized holographic projector to disguise it for missions.

Bucky tugged off the nightdress she’d been provided to sleep in, and Natasha’s gaze swept her body the way it _hadn’t_ when she’d come out of the bath yesterday. 

Natalia appeared from nowhere and draped up behind her.

“Dobroye utro, Lishka,” she murmured in Bucky’s ear, and Natasha took one look at Natalia and turned back to the box with its arm.

Bucky was strangely relieved to see that while the arm looked almost identical (it gleamed more, was more sinuous and less brutish, but otherwise, otherwise, it was as familiar as her right arm,) there was no red star on the shoulder. Nothing was on the shoulder; not even the familiar blue star in its block of red and white stripes.

It was blank.

She turned so Natasha could access her shoulder, and Natalia helped the other woman fit the appendage into the socket there. 

“I should find a neurosurgeon and an orthopedic surgeon I trust and replace that housing too,” Natasha murmured.

“Not yet,” Natalia said, and Bucky sagged slightly. Natalia’s body behind hers shored her up, and the arm across her abdomen held her still. “She’s not ready for that.”

“Oh, like it’s up to you!” Natasha snapped.

“No, but she doesn’t know it’s up to _her_ either.”

Natasha froze, and Natalia’s thumb took up a soothing, circular motion on Bucky’s stomach, just above her navel. She remembered teaching Natalia that, curling around her in their supervised bed, soft words in Russian laden with meaning and secrets and lies.

“Nata,” Bucky said. “Stop.”

Natalia pulled away sharply, and Bucky was cold and exposed in the room.

Bucky clenched her left fist, and the motion happened instantly, without that barest delay she’d grown so accustomed to, without the soft hum of motors she’d hated.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Let’s find you something to wear,” Natasha said, swallowing hard and tearing her gaze away from Bucky’s body.

WIth the arm, light and painless and perfect, she felt powerful.

Natalia dressed her in loose clothing that felt like silk against her skin, and allowed for quite a bit more freedom of movement than the suit from yesterday. Barefoot, Bucky padded back out into the main part of the suite.

“Okay, right,” Natasha was saying into her ever present phone. “Of course I would tell you if it was something important. I just--”

She nodded along silently for a moment. “No, it’s Red. It’s not an unknown-- honey, you know me. You know I _wouldn’t_ \--”

Then, she murmured, “of course. I love you too. Bye.”

Bucky tried to smile at her, and she tried a smile back, and Natalia walked in and said, “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“Nope,” Natasha said. “Not a thing. Just practicing our awkward false smiles on each other. You guys look nice, comfy, that’s good. I’ll just-- I had a call. I’ll go change.”

“I told you so!” Natalia called after Natasha as she disappeared into her room.

She turned to Bucky and said, “You used to braid my hair. I remember that. It was only a few times, but you--” She shook her head, cutting herself off. “Sit down, lastochka,” she said gently. “Let me fix your hair.”

Bucky sat down, and Natalia started humming snatches of mismatched tunes as she buried her fingers in Bucky’s hair.

Bucky dropped her chin to her chest. “ _How did you escape?_ ” she asked in Russian.

Natalia hesitated for a second, then drew a strand up from Bucky’s temple and echoed, “ _How did you?_ ”

“ _Captain America gave me a second chance._ ”

“ _That, then. That was how I escaped._ ” Bucky said, though it wasn't exactly true.

Bucky sighed heavily and twitched when Natalia’s fingertips brushed the nape of her neck.

“ _Oh, Lishka,_ ” Natalia whispered.

***

There was a flash, blood-bright, and a woman’s terrified scream, and then Bucky was being wrestled to the floor and she opened her mouth to cry out--

Green eyes, red hair, and a deadly hand pressed over her mouth, keeping her silent.

“Lishka, lastochka,” Natalia said. “Come back to me now.”

Bucky gasped against the hand.

“Blood,” she said, muffled and frantic. “Whose blood, who did I kill?”

“There’s no blood,” Natalia said, removing her hand, and Bucky wanted desperately to trust her, but she’d felt it, she’d _remembered_ as it dripped down her back, and she could still feel it there wet and warm and awful.

“Who, who did I kill!?” Bucky demanded. She had to know, she remembered everything else, she had to remember this.

“No one, I promise,” Natalia said, and Bucky wanted to believe her but--

“I taught you how to lie,” she said, shoving Natalia away. “I taught--”

“It’s just massage oil,” Natasha said, and she was out of grabbing distance, which was probably wise. “Not blood. I swear it.”

“The woman, is she--”

“They left. Everyone these days knows how combat fatigue works; I sent them away. Everything’s okay.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Bucky said, sitting up. She was shirtless for the massage, and for the first time, she _minded_. “I killed… I _killed_.”

“You were a sniper for the Army,” Natasha said.

“Yes,” Bucky agreed. “Since I was _sixteen_. I’ve killed my entire life. I’ve killed for three different governments, on _every_ continent, for reasons I will probably never know-- I was a loaded gun. I _am_ a loaded gun. And you’re saying… you’re saying everything is okay.”

Natasha lifted her hands. “Yes.”

Bucky stared at her, trying to determine her angle, figure out how she was being played, and then, then she laughed.

It came out creaky and old and it shattered on the floor like a crystal wine glass, but neither Natasha nor Natalia flinched away from it.

“I don’t belong here,” Bucky whispered. “Not… not massages and…”

“Imagined murder?” Natasha suggested.

Bucky barked out another peal of laughter. “No, no that I think… I think that is normal.”

“Let’s go back to the room, Lishka,” Natalia said. “We can pack, and we can plan.”

Bucky nodded.

***

Her clothes were clean and pressed and neatly hung in the closet when they came back, and that implication, the idea that someone had come into her room while they were out, made her uneasy in her skin. This hotel was hardly secure at all.

Natasha and Natalia argued from Natasha’s room, and Bucky started with the undershirt.

“You can’t just _take_ her! She needs help, and a life on the run won’t--”

“And your plan is better? You say you know your husband, so tell me, what will he do when you bring his best friend, the woman he views as his little sister, into his house?”

“He wouldn’t do _anything_!”

“He will force her hand, and he will make her be the girl she was.”

Bucky focused carefully on buttoning the flies of the fatigues, which took a little doing. She’d taken women’s pants and the buttons were backwards.

“And you won’t? You just want her to be the WInter Soldier you remember.”

Bucky clenched her fists, but forced herself not to act, to instead bend and tug on each combat boot, lacing them carefully, precisely.

“That was cruel, even for you, Tasha,” Natalia said.

“Yeah, because you’re staying well above the belt here,” Natasha snapped.

“Well we can’t keep her here indefinitely,” Natalia said. “What do you suggest we do?”

Bucky straightened up, and pulled the gearbag back out from where the bellboy had placed it, packing the uniforms in carefully, then moving systematically through the rest of the closet.

“I’ve got the house in Malibu,” Natasha said musingly. “The two of you could go there, you could… get her back into her head or whatever. And in a couple of months--”

“She can move into that guest bedroom you made up for her,” Natalia said, and it sounded like agreement.

Bucky went to the drawer where Natasha had shown her her new passport and her banking information was located, and she pocketed the documents and cards.

“Okay,” Natasha said. Bucky moved to the window, disabled the alarm. “I’ll book your flight.”

The window shattered at a single blow from the metal arm, and she knew Natalia would chase her down almost immediately, so she couldn’t hesitate. She climbed out, dropped the two stories to the kitchen roof below, and took off running.

This time, she heard nothing, remembered or real, and it felt a little like freedom.


End file.
